III
It was not until after their marriage that Olivia discovered Triona’s essential greatness—and his essential and fatal defect.
He had taken two drinks of whisky and lay in a drunken slumber. Olivia found on the floor beside him the original notes of the stolen story, preserved for this dénouement. For the first time, she knew him for what he was—no mere recorder of his own experiences and observations, no mere note-book-and-camera author, but an imaginative artist of the first rank.
She was almost stunned by the greatness of her discovery, the realization that he, her husband, was worthy to be placed on a pedestal beside the greatest writers of fictitious travels—Homer, Dante, Milton, Munchausen, Dr. Cook.
Then she made the second, the fatal discovery—that his real name was—John Briggs.